Touchpads are good, but if you want a bigger area for mousing around, then I would suggest a drawing tablet. I have the wacom 4"x 5" intuos 2 and it's fairly silent. It comes with a pen and a mouse. If you don't use the mouse, you would only hear noise from clicking the quiet buttons on the pen or drawing with the pen directly on the surface.

It's much more expensive than a mouse though. $300+ CAN. There's a less expensive model, the Graphire2 I think, but the pen and mouse that come with it are not as well designed.

try dell's 'quiet keyboard'. it's a generic keyboard that used to come with their older pentium ii's. it's extremely quiet. clicking sound is definitely gone... and all you hear is the 'thump' when you strike the key and very quiet spring release noise....

well my roommate in college had that... and that's what i can remember. at the time i had hot swap scsi running so noiseless wasn't really my thing all i can remember is since we shared a room, when he went to sleep, i used his computer for typing essay due 8am next day because my microsoft keyboard was way too loud at night.

your best bet however will be go to bestbuy or other retailers and try them out. for me, the touch and feel of the keyboard is more important... you wouldn't want a quiet keyboard with sticky keys and heavy springs... it does diminish the level of endorphin as you're typing in front of your computer!

as of the mouse, i'm not too sure... but since the noise seems to be plastic clicking sound, have you tried to do a simple custom mod on your mouse? it could be very simple.... as simple as wrapping a strand of ductape around some plastic release mechanism. good luck to you!

i have a dell quiet keyboard and it sounds like any other keyboard, im saying what if someone put a layer of rubber under the keys or something so they dont tap at all. While ur at it, u could make keys that glow in the dark or are clear and have light shining through them so u can see them in the dark.

I have three Dell QuietKeys of various vintages and manufacturers, they're my favorite keyboards. They are definitely NOT particularly quiet. Just ask my wife, the clicking wakes her up even though my computer room is 2 rooms away from the bedroom.

Actully this is a very valid topic. As my computer nears inaudibility, my keyboard has turned into the loudest component of my system. You can have quiet keyboards. I have a Dell Inspiron 7500 notebook with a keyboard that is damn near silent. The key feel is very good too. Short travel but not mushy, actually kind of crisp. I only wish I could find a full-size keyboard this good (and I've tried dozens of them).

Yeah, it's all relative. Your ears get used to a certian level of noise and that becomes the baseline that you judge things from. As the noise level drops things you never noticed before become more evident. That's why these guys with delta fans on their rigs will tell you "My Enermax PSU, Maxtor HDD, Lite-on DVD drive, etc is very quiet, I can't even hear it"

this is a huge gap in the market and one i have been thinking about for years. i am also surprised how little attention this has recieved on silentpcreview. i asked a number of people in the tech industry and got mostly strange looks or laughs, no one understood why i would want to do this. but people said that about silent cases too and now they come asking me about it. i haven't talked much about it because to tell you the truth i wanted to manufacture one myself. but penetrating the mouse market seems really difficult, and with

the idea has also caused me to disassemle plenty of mice.
two main causes of the sound are not just the tiny clicking mechanism but the echo of the click inside the casing of the mouse. i plan to experiment isolating these sounds with my new mouse, a microsoft cordless optical, and will return to post images shortly.

I have a logitech internet navigator keyboard which is fairly silent. Came with a nice dual optical mousen which isn't noisy either.
I really don't recommend that flat keyboard for anyone who uses a computer a lot. Those things have barely zero resitance which really increases chances of getting RSI and various other joint and muscle problems. If you want to avoid RSI (and those other problems) I suggest you dig out an ancient klink-klonk ibm keyboard (and go deaf using it). I can't stretch my right arm anymore without dying of pain, and I'm only 17 .

those rolling/flat keyboards are no option, that is a ridiculous solution.
the same goes for anything apple. ;o)

here's my little experiment tonight...

the mouse, case apart.

those black boxes in front are the clickers, tiny buttons on top recieve the click. these need to be altered or isolated.

i wrapped some putty around the left clicker, which seemed to make a bit of a difference, but not enough. the click does not sound nearly as loud with the housing apart, but once echoed inside the case it is far too loud. obviously that little box can not be isolated completely.

there is not much room in there for stuffing anything, but i think some dense foam would help a lot. any suggestions for techniques or materials welcome.

How 'bout rockwool?
I don't think it's electroconductive but it does have nice insul(and isol~)ation properties. You would however have to find a way not to get it under your mouse ball. Or is that an optical mouse?

Rockwool is generally used to insulate rooftops and such. I just thought of this because I'm currently insulating my roof . It's basically a dense and heavy kind of wool. I don't think anyone's used it in a silentpc application before, but there's a first time for everything! I guess it would work, but I don't know for sure. Perhaps I should try it sometimes.

A thin dense foam would be nice as well yes. If you find such a foam please let us know .

the left mouse button is now actually -much- quieter than the right which i did not isolate... i will experiment with using more of this stuff (i actually took a picture off my wall to get the blue tack from it and only had this little bit).. it is now at least at a tolerable level, but far from as quiet as i would like.

perhaps someone knows what kind of mechanism would be inside those little black boxes that actually make them click...?

what makes the keys so noisy is that they sit, or hover, on the spring mechanism that they clip onto. this explains why laptop keyboards are so quiet because they are nice and tight. lightly tap on your keys and you will notice they are all slightly loose, clumsy and loud. bigger keys are louder because they move around more.

also contributing to noise is the echo under the keys, the whole keyboard is echoing because there is nothing to absorb the sound. i don't think mod's to keyboards is much of a possibility, i think manufacturers just need to think about this and make better products.

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